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THE APPLICATION PROCESS
Your application to a health professions school begins here at Hunter, and it should begin EARLY! Before you apply to your schools you will need to do some basis "housework" making sure that all of the documents you will need for the application process are ready, accurate and available. The Committee letter process is one item you want to take care of first. You also MUST check all transcripts for any possible discrepancies. Most importantly, you should know if you have any financial concerns that might make the application process difficult.
THE COMMITEE LETTER
Hunter’s premed committee meets in the Fall and Spring semesters. All students with a science GPA of 3.2 and above, (see the Hunter GPA calculation pageto help you determine this), are eligible for formal committee letters. Students with science GPA’s below 3.2 should see the advisor to discuss other options available. If you are taking your exam for your health professions school in the early spring or summer (April-June) then you will want a Spring Committee letter. This means gathering all of your letters of recommendation, all of your faculty science and non-science evaluations, as well as making sure that you have put a current resume, the prehealth packet (see section on Prehealth Evaluations), and an autobiographical statement. All of this MUST be in your file by MARCH 1st of the year you will be taking your exam and applying!
If you take your professional school exam in late summer (July-September) you may wish to get a Fall Committee letter. That deadline, for the materials listed above, would be July 1st.TRANSCRIPTS
Transcripts may have mistakes on them. It is YOUR responsibility to check for accuarcy long before you need to send transcripts out. Changes to a transcript can take from 6-8 weeks, and in some cases, if an appeal is needed, the process could take even longer.
FINANCIAL AID/STOPS
You must be sure that you are NEVER in default of student loans. However, if this happens you will need to remedy the situation before you apply to health professions schools.
You may have a stop on your record--forgot to return a book to the library, failed to provide proof of immunization, etc. It is YOUR responsibility to make sure all stops are cleared as your transcripts cannot be sent with a stop on your record!
It is important that you think about the application process here at Hunter BEFORE you begin studying for your professional school exams. As you can see, you will need to be thinking about WHEN you want to apply as well as HOW you will be applying so that you are ready for the expensive and time-consuming process of making application to a professional school. Below are the things you will need to know once you've finished your Hunter process and begin work on your professional school exams and applications.
Most (but not all) individual schools of the health professions schools subscribe to one or another of their centralized application services. Allopathic medical schools have AMCAS; osteopathic schools, AACOMAS; dental schools, AADSAS; VMCAS for veterinary school and so on. You can easily access these from the Links & Resources page.
Be aware that certain individual medical schools do not participate in any central service, nor do any podiatric, physical therapy or physician assistant programs and for these you must write directly to each school in question asking for their unique application packets.
All application services require a basic processing fee ranging from $50 to $125 plus a sliding scale fee depending on the number of schools to which you request information to be sent. There is an additional fee at the time of submission of the secondary or supplemental application. This fee varies and is approximately the same for those schools that do not participate in a centralized application service.
AMCAS is the centralized application agency developed by AAMC to help simplify and standardize the process of applying to participating US medical schools. It does not make any admission decisions nor does it advise students where to apply; the individual medical schools are completely responsible for their own admissions decisions. AMCAS does save you a lot of work, however. For one application (submitted to AMCAS) you can apply to about one hundred and 115 participating schools. For the small number of non-participating schools, you must, unfortunately, submit a separate application for each one.
Schools, and their admissions committees, follow strict rules concerning procedures and deadlines. Therefore, get into the habit now of carefully reading instructions as you fill out the numerous forms and other paperwork with which you will have to contend over the ensuing months. See the timetable for information on when you should begin the application process.
For more specific information about the Application Process, click on the following links:
Major Indecision Workshop
